We Sell Stuff Amazon and eBay Won’t

We love marketplaces and are proud to partner with many of the leading online marketplaces. They often push the envelope in terms of fast shipping and ease of use, and are responsible for many improvements in eCommerce over the years.

But they don’t sell everything.

Even in this day and age, there are brands that do not want their products sold via online marketplaces, so authorized dealers like us can’t sell them there. This is often because the manufacturer does not want online sellers to undercut their stocking dealers, but sometimes it is because brands think it undercuts the premium image they are pursuing.

We sell multiple brands in our online store in in our Durham, N.C., brick and mortar store that we cannot sell on eBay, Amazon.com, or Walmart.com, including N82 holsters and Merrell footwear.

N82 Tactical Professional Holster, One of the products we cannot sell on Amazon or Ebay.

A larger chunk of the products we stock that are not for sale in online marketplaces are what the marketplaces consider to be “prohibited.” In general, this means the marketplace has made a decision for political or legal reasons not to sell or facilitate the sale of an item, even when the sale is perfectly legal. Maybe they don’t want the potential liability or the public relations nightmare if the next Virginia Tech shooter buys his magazines on their marketplace.

We respect the right of the marketplaces to set their own rules, even when we don’t agree with them. We just want our customers to know that just because you cannot find an item on your favorite shipping site doesn’t mean it’s not available online.

It’s not just the marketplaces that have restrictions; it can be the payment processors as well. PayPal tried to prohibit us from selling some of these items on our web site, so we no longer accept PayPal as a method of payment. We dropped Square from our brick and mortar store for similar reasons. Its unfortunate that banks and payment processors are trying to prohibit you from buying certain products, just because they consider them politically incorrect.

Don’t get us wrong; this isn’t open season on illegal purchases. We abide by both federal and state laws. For example, we do not export firearms parts, we do not ship body armor to Connecticut, and we do not ship high capacity magazines to those states that restrict their sale. In fact, we regularly have to cancel sales and refund the purchase price to customers who fail to heed our warnings or are ignorant of the law. But for those customers who enjoy exercising their Second Amendment rights, we invite you to shop with us.